Hospital gowns in general are notoriously inadequate for preserving any semblance of privacy for a patient. Regardless of the reason for the hospital stay, it seems that the gowns offered to patients constantly overexpose the patients unnecessarily. While some hospital departments may have used a variety of gowns that are more specific to the actions that occur frequently in those departments, the continual common complaint is still that the gowns make the patients feel extremely exposed.
In the labor and delivery department, the gowns typically used may include a way for the birthing mother wearing the gown to easily access her breasts immediately after the delivery so that the newborn baby can have skin to skin contact and begin to try to nurse. While the concept of a do-it-all gown that works for labor, delivery, and post-delivery is a practical solution, the minor changes between the variety of obstetric gowns still fail to provide the one thing that most women have simply accepted as an impossibility in the situation, which is a little more privacy and modesty.
One problem with the presence of a gown during labor and delivery is the need to periodically, and sometimes frequently, adjust the positions of fetal and contraction monitor transducers over the mother's abdomen. To accommodate for transducer adjustments, the delivery, and post-delivery, generally, the gown is pushed up to waist level or higher in order to make the adjustment, check the labor progress, or deliver the baby. Thus, conventional obstetric gowns used by women during labor and delivery may have a split down the back and/or front, may wrap around the torso loosely, may have gaping openings for breast access, may have openings too small for an average woman to access her breasts, may precariously unsnap at the shoulder and then expose the entire breast, or may require frequent undoing and redoing of string ties in order to maintain a sense of privacy, etc.
Additionally, a common complaint is simply that the gowns are ugly. This complaint may be related to some extent to the fact that many gowns are fit for a one-size-fits-all type of use. As such, for smaller women, the gowns may have too much material to manage without being overexposed, and for larger women, the gowns may not have enough material, and they cannot help but be overexposed. Accordingly, a better option of apparel is desired for obstetric gowns.